Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship: Scholars transforming academia

27 July 2015

Recognising the need for transformation of the country's academic cohort, the Mellon
Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Programme identifies highly promising students at
a very early stage in their academic careers, and through financial support, mentoring
and stimulating academic activities, establishes them on an academic career track.

There is no well-established pipeline of black
or female academics in South Africa – or in
Africa. It's one of the toughest challenges in
transforming the university sector.

Among the recruitment challenges is
insufficient infrastructural support for the
long and expensive journey to PhD level.

Recognising the need for transformation
of the country's academic cohort, US-based
equity programme the Mellon Minority
Undergraduate Fellowship Programme,
funded by the Andrew W Mellon Foundation,
extended its programme to South Africa and
UCT in 2002.

In 2003, the foundation reaffirmed its
commitment and broadened the MMUF's
mission, changing its name to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship programme to
symbolically connect the mission to the stellar
education achievements of Dr Benjamin E
Mays (an American educator, minister and social
activist who mentored Martin Luther King Jr).

The programme identifies highly promising
students at a very early stage in their academic
careers, and through financial support,
mentoring and stimulating academic activities,
establishes them on an academic career track.

Students who are entering the final year
of a three-year degree or the third year of
a four-year professional degree are eligible
for selection as MMUF fellows. Students in a
three-year degree programme are expected to
apply for an appropriate honours programme
as a condition of the award.

MMUF academic coordinator Gideon
Nomdo says: "It sets up a holistic collaborative
and supportive framework through which
students are guided and nurtured into
postgraduate studies towards achieving a PhD.
?A particular type of mentoring philosophy
informs MMUF's key goal, which is to
increase the number of black academics in
higher education institutions."

Building knowledge by fostering community

May is always a red-letter month for students
entering the programme. They gather for
their last briefings before embarking on what
for many is their first trip abroad: the MMUF
summer institute in the US, held during the
mid-year vacation.

"What makes the MMUF programme
unique," explains Nasrin Olla, "is that it
recognised, from its inception, that scholarly activity cannot be unbound from a sense of
community and friendship. The programme
emphasises support structures that are both
objectively intellectual and socially conscious;
it builds knowledge through a fostering of
community.

"Above all, what I learnt from my MMUF
experience, to paraphrase the philosopher
Hannah Arendt, is that this activity we call
'thinking' is about being open to the words
and presence of others."

MMUF fellow Ziyanda Ndzendze (master's,
2011 to 2012 cohort) reflects: "I think the
biggest thing for me was that someone saw
potential in me and was willing to invest in it.

"Mellon opened a space for intellectual
debates, and spaces to converse with big,
scary professors. They did a very good job of
bridging the gap between myself as a junior
student and academic staff, through talks and
dinners and other kinds of gatherings – and
also getting an academic mentor from my field.

"It also forced me to take my research
seriously and taught me how to talk about
my research confidently, and gave me the
ability to engage with people who are not in
my discipline about my research."

Initially, Ndzendze wasn't interested in a
career in academia.

"For a while I felt like academia was
selfish and only focused on using people
(participants) to write papers and share them
with the elite academic spaces. And when
I started thinking about it, because of my
interest in teaching and research, it felt a bit
far-fetched for me as a black student because
of the face of academia around me.

"A programme like MMUF addresses
transformation, and with so many people
passionate about social justice and community,
I started to see more and more how one can
make a career out of academia and still be a
socially conscious citizen at the same time.

"[The programme] also made me realise
that academia was not a far-fetched goal; and
that even I, as a student of colour, can be a
professor one day."

"Each university needs to take responsibility,
acknowledge the problem ... and start creating
space to cultivate academics of colour.

"The reality is that there are too many
obstacles in the way for students of colour,
when it comes to pursuing higher education,
that are beyond their control. If the university
claims to care about transformation, they need
to take the mission of producing academics
from diverse backgrounds seriously."

Advice to young black students interested
in a career in academia?

"Believe in yourself, surround yourself
with like-minded people, realise that you
have an important contribution to make
in academia – your experience is just as
important as everyone else?s. And read and
read and read ..."

Dr Sean Samson is one of
12 candidates who completed his PhD
on the MMUF programme (2005/2006
MMUF cohort). He now lectures in the
Humanities? Academic Development
Programme and works on the First-Year
Experience project.

"I've met black academics from
far afield who, through sharing their
experiences, helped me do away with the
'myth' of the academy or my own naiveté.
By this I mean ideas around a linear route to
achieving the PhD, and an assumption about
where obstacles would come from. In short,
life happens.

"My own journey has been characterised
by health concerns, funding issues, and
family issues; not to mention the obstacles
that come with the actual research (cue the
violins). While these concerns have not made
the journey easy, I knew that others, from
similar backgrounds, had made it through.

"I had access to a network of supportive
fellows, and black academics who had
maintained their integrity (research and
otherwise), especially in those cases where
they are called upon to speak for the
marginalised. I think that this network of
black academics that MMUF creates has
been the key resource for me.

"MMUF is focused on increasing
diversity in the academy, but it has a
development focus where the current calls
for transformation require more immediate
responses. I became a fellow knowing that
the work the MMUF community produces
will contribute to diversifying scholarship,
but it is only recently that I began to think
about what teaching for transformation
would look like, what the classroom in
which this kind of teaching takes place
could 'feel' like.

I've also been reminded of the issues
(outside of the classroom) that affect
academic success, and that are still
racialised. Interestingly, this is refl ected in
my own student experience – but in my
memory I had made it the experience of
a minority, which it isn't. I'm finding my
feet at the moment; this is the kind of
consciousness I'm trying to develop as
a teacher, and I believe that MMUF has
contributed to this thinking."

Did you know?

Since its inception in 2002, the UCT-MMUF has helped 12 PhD students complete their degrees. Currently, 11 students are in PhD programmes (as far afield as New York, Cambridge, Tillburg, as well as closer to home, in Pretoria, Johannesburg and at UCT), 15 students are doing master's degrees, five are honours students, and others are in undergraduate programmes. UCT is also currently host to two international MMUF fellows: Zine Magubane and Victoria Cullis Buthelezi, both in the Faculty of Humanities.